Content Delivery Networks (CDN) are increasingly used to distribute content, such as videos, multimedia, images, audio files, documents, software, and other electronic resources, to end users on behalf of one or more content providers. Using a CDN allows the content providers to increase the speed and reliability of content delivery without deploying additional infrastructure. Moreover, the end users obtain the content with fewer delays. However, many CDNs are generally not configured to consider business considerations or agreements when delivering content to an end user.
Typically, a CDN includes several content servers from which the content can be supplied to a requesting end user. To decrease latency and increase performance, a CDN will attempt to provide the content from a content server that is separated by as little network infrastructure as possible from the requesting device, with particular emphasis on low latency. Thus, if a request is received at the CDN from an end user in Denver, Colo., the CDN will attempt to determine which content-providing server provides the least number of network elements between the server and the end user. However, the nearest content server to a requesting device is not always the most cost effective for the CDN. For example, providing the content from the lowest latency content server may send the content over a third party network that requires a significant cost to the CDN. In another example, even if the content server is geographically near the requesting user, the server may not be logically near the end user, such that no path between the CDN and the end user exists without traversing points far from the CDN and the end user. Such circumstances may exact an unnecessary usage cost or performance impact for the CDN. Therefore, by utilizing only those content servers that are geographically near the requesting end user, the CDN is not as efficient and cost-effective as possible.
It is with these and other issues in mind that various aspects of the present disclosure were developed.